Metal, like aluminum-germanium (Al—Ge) used for eutectic bonding of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) devices to complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) layers, can exhibit non-linear behavior when the material is overloaded past its linear operating range. Overloading can come from exogenous loading like thermal, packaging, thermal bonding, assembly, shock and other external loads. Some MEMS devices bonded to CMOS an out-of-plane sense electrode is interposed between a moving MEMS structure and the CMOS top metal electrode. The mechanical connection across this sense electrode contains metal and when the device is overloaded from exogenous inputs has nonlinear behavior which is undesirable and for MEMS sensors is transduced into a false signal. It is therefore beneficial to have a mechanical connection across the sense gap which does not contain any metal.